Bringing Up Father — buf370729

Four panels follow Jiggs, the Irish-immigrant-made-good, as he deliberately trashes his room to occupy Hercules the butler all day — only to discover Hercules is taking the day off and heading out the door. George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, running it until his death in 1954. His line work is instantly recognizable: fluid Art Nouveau curves borrowed from his admiration of Alphonse Mucha, meticulous crosshatching, and furniture that tilts with comic energy. The strip's recurring tension between new money and old-world domestic formality drove gags for four decades. King Features syndicated it to hundreds of papers worldwide, making Jiggs and Maggie among the most reproduced comic characters of the early twentieth century.